If you write every morning for half an hour before work, you’ve got a writing routine. Do you decide on a weekly goal to write so many words? That would be a writing routine. Do you tell yourself that you’re going to get a scene written every day and then do so? You’ve got a routine.
If you have a writing routine, kudos to you! Honestly, getting a good routine together is half the battle of getting that book written.
But if you want an even easier way to get those words down, you might want to establish a writing ritual.
Some people have a bedtime ritual or a morning ritual. Every night before you go to bed you might change, brush your teeth, read for half an hour and then turn off the light and you’re asleep because your brain knows what to expect and as you go through that ritual it is preparing itself for sleep. Every morning you’ve got your ritual of getting up, having a cup of coffee, going to the gym, and so on. It’s a ritual that gets you ready for the day.
The same can be true for writing. You can develop a writing ritual which tells your brain ‘now is the time to let go and allow your imagination free rein.’ Now is the time to live your story in your head and write it down as you do so.
So, just as you know there are certain things you must do before going to sleep—your bedtime ritual—what are the sorts of things you might want to do for your writing ritual?
Move
You might want to go for a walk or to the gym before you work. Working your body and allowing your mind to roam at will may help you get into the right frame of mind to write.
Create an environment
Create the right environment and keep it. If you are comfortable on the sofa, sit on the sofa. Prefer a table? Then sit at your desk or dining table. The key is to always sit in the same place every time you go to write.
Perhaps you might light a candle so you have a soothing scent to accompany you on your writing journey. Music is always helpful (personally, I put on Brain.fm and once my mind hears those soothing sounds it knows that it’s time to concentrate, time to write). And be sure you have a glass of water or a cup of tea or coffee nearby.
All right, you’re seated in a comfortable spot, you’ve got your tea, candle, and tunes, now what?
What will you write with?
Now, you write in any way that makes the most sense to you. You might pull out a notebook and grab your favorite pen. Perhaps you write on an electronic notebook like a Kindle Scribe or Remarkable. Or do you turn on your laptop and open Scrivener or Microsoft Word? However you feel most comfortable and creative is what you should provide yourself with.
Moving into the zone
We’re moving ever closer to the actual magic, but wait. Do you need to think about what you’re going to write? Make notes? Do you need to re-read what you wrote the last time you wrote to get back into the story? Or perhaps you like to pre-write where you write out where your characters are before the scene you are going to write and figure out where they need to get to by the end. The act of getting started, the ritual you perform to move your mind into the zone of writing, is an essential part of your ritual.
You’re writing
And then there you are, writing. Making magic happen. Spinning a world and creating real people with your words. But it couldn’t happen without the ritual, the ritual of writing.